Skip to footer

Why Oklahoma wants to delay three executions

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt says the state does not have the necessary lethal drugs or trained medical personnel to carry out scheduled executions.

|
(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
The execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt says the state does not have the drugs on hand or the medical staff prepared needed to carry out a Nov. 13 execution, and is requesting a delay until January.
  • By Sean Murphy Associated Press

| Oklahoma City, Okla.

Oklahoma's attorney general is seeking to delay three upcoming executions, including two set for next month, saying that the state needs more time to obtain drugs and train staff on new lethal injection protocols put in place after an execution went awry in April.

Attorney General Scott Pruitt filed a notice late Friday seeking to delay the executions of Richard Eugene Glossip, John Marion Grant and Charles Warner until 2015. Warner had been originally scheduled to die on April 29 — the same night that inmate Clayton Lockett writhed and moaned on the gurney, prompting the state to put all executions on hold until a review was conducted.

Warner's new execution date is Nov. 13, but Pruitt said in the court filing that Oklahoma does not have the necessary drugs or commitments from medical personnel to carry out the execution.

"The state does not want to rush implementation of this new training program, especially so soon after revision of the execution protocol," Pruitt wrote. "The additional requested time for all three executions will allow (the Oklahoma Department of Corrections) sufficient time in which to obtain the necessary drugs and medical personnel and to fully and thoroughly train each member of the new execution team."

An attorney representing the death row inmates had no immediate comment Monday on the filing.

A review from the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety blamed an improperly placed intravenous line for the troubles in Lockett's execution.

The botched execution of Clayton Lockett helped reignite debate over the death penalty in the US. As The Christian Science Monitor reported:

The death penalty no longer has quite the unassailable support it once had in Oklahoma, especially not in the state’s courts, as a national battle over the legality of lethal injection has washed into the state’s courtrooms.

In recent months, a pitched battle has arisen between opponents and supporters of capital punishment over whether states have the right to use lethal injection drugs from sources they decline to name. States have been reaching out to such pharmacies over the past few months, after the European manufacturer of the most common drug used in the procedure cut off supplies to death houses.  

Death penalty opponents have leveraged the issue of states using secret suppliers' drugs – which opponents say could be of poor quality, bringing unconstitutional suffering to the condemned – to get bigger questions about the legality and ethics of capital punishment back into courtrooms.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Why Oklahoma wants to delay three executions
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/1013/Why-Oklahoma-wants-to-delay-three-executions
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe